Edna Boies HopkinsStrong in Character, Colorful in Expression

“It is particularly gratifying to find a catalogue focused on an American woman who was once widely known, Edna Boies Hopkins (1872-1937), and even better that she specialized in woodblock prints that are still available and affordable.... This publication and exhibition will surely stimulate interest among collectors and curators, thanks in particular to Vasseur’s insightful essay, intriguing historical photographs, and useful appendices.”

Fine Art Connoisseur

“Curator of European art at the Columbus Museum of Art, Vasseur excels in helping the reader get to know this talented artist. Well-chosen archival illustrations also make Hopkins an appealing subject for further study.... A finely executed, well-designed catalog....”

Ohioana Quarterly

Edna Boies Hopkins (1872–1937) is best known for her
floral woodblock prints that range from delicate Japanese-inspired
stylizations to boldly colored and progressively
modernist works. In her brief twenty-year career, Hopkins produced
seventy-four known woodblock prints, including figurative
work and landscapes as well as floral compositions. This catalogue
raisonné is the first in-depth study of this once well-known American
artist. It illustrates all of Hopkins’s known prints, related drawings, and
studies.

Born in Hudson, Michigan, Hopkins attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati
from 1895 to 1898. In 1899 she took classes with the influential artist Arthur
Wesley Dow, an advocate of Japanese art. Following her marriage in 1904, Hopkins
and her husband settled in Paris, where they remained until the outbreak
of World War I. After returning to America, Hopkins became part of a small
group of artists in Provincetown, whose innovations in woodblock printmaking
have come to be known as the Provincetown print or the white line woodcut. In
1917, a visit to the Cumberland Falls region of Kentucky provided the inspiration
for some of Hopkins’s most important prints which predate the work of
American regionalist painters and printmakers by a decade or more.

In addition to the catalogue raisonné, Edna Boies Hopkins includes much new biographical research along with a census of her prints and a comprehensive list of her exhibitions.

Dominique H. Vasseur, curator of European art at the Columbus Museum of Art, is the author of The Soul Unbound: The Photographs of Jane Reece and The Lithographs of Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret.
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Rookwood and the American Indian blends anthropology with art history to reveal the relationships between the white settlers and the Native Americans in general, between Cincinnati and the American Indian in particular, and ultimately between Rookwood artists and their Indian friends.